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arXiv · 1704.04639

Physical and dynamical properties of the anomalous comet 249P/LINEAR

Julio A. Fernández·Javier Licandro·Fernando Moreno·Andrea Sosa·Antonio Cabrera-Lavers·Julia de León·Peter Birtwhistle
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Abstract

Images and low-resolution spectra of the near-Earth Jupiter family comet (JFC) 249P/LINEAR in the visible range obtained with the instrument OSIRIS in the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias on January 3, 4, 6 and February 6, 2016 are presented, together with a series of images obtained with the 0.4m telescope of the Great Shefford Observatory. The reflectance spectrum of 249P is similar to that of a B-type asteroid. The comet has an absolute (visual) nuclear magnitude $H_V=17.0\pm 0.4$, which corresponds to a radius of about 1-1.3 km for a geometric albedo $\sim 0.04-0.07$. From the analysis of GTC images using a Monte Carlo dust tail code we find that the time of maximum dust ejection rate was around 1.6 days before perihelion. We may be in front of a new class of near-Earth JFC whose source region is not the distant trans-neptunian population, but much closer in the asteroid belt. Therefore, 249P/LINEAR may be a near-Earth counterpart of the so-called main-belt comets or active asteroids.

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Julio A. Fernández, Javier Licandro, Fernando Moreno, Andrea Sosa, Antonio Cabrera-Lavers, Julia de León, Peter Birtwhistle. 2017-04-15. Physical and dynamical properties of the anomalous comet 249P/LINEAR. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2017.04.004

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